


what my heart meant

by TheQueenInTheNorth



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Groundhog Day, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:00:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26146804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQueenInTheNorth/pseuds/TheQueenInTheNorth
Summary: Sinara tries to save Kasius' life on a battlefield they have no chance of winning. Every time she fails, the day starts anew.
Relationships: Kasius/Sinara (Marvel)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 11
Collections: AOS AU August 2020





	what my heart meant

Sinara has never been as on edge as she is now in her life, and she hasn’t even stepped foot on the battlefield yet.

Hell, she hasn’t even left the bed yet.

But by the way the last day went, she knows they are dangerously close to Odium becoming inevitable.

Kasius has only so much control over these troops; his generals have argued for days now that they ought to go out in a blaze of glory.

The battlefield is not Kasius’ place, they both agree on that, but she doesn’t know how to get him away from here. How to get either of them away from here.

She almost brought desertion up once but before the words could leave her lips, Kasius kissed them away, almost like he knew they were coming.

He probably did. He knows her far too well.

But she knows him far too well, too.

“Stop pretending,”she reprimands gently.

Kasius opens his eyes and smiles at her, not quite as bright as usual.“I didn’t want to disrupt you watching me sleep.”

Sinara scoffs.“I wasn’t.”

She was, of course. She feels the need to look her fill while she still can.

They’ll start on the lowest ranking soldiers with the Odium and while she has been acting as his guard a while now, she technically isn’t.

His father disapproves of her more so than of anything else his son does. Once the order goes out, his generals will make certain she’s one of the first to be send off, she is sure of that.

“Of course you weren’t,”Kasius says and pulls her to him for a kiss that tastes far too strongly of goodbye.

She puts an end to it sooner than she’d like but she can’t get maudlin just because she’s faced with her quickly approaching death. There’s still Kasius to think of. Kasius might make it back to Hala.

Back to marrying whatever highborn dimwit his father picks for him and then he can forget all about her and his silly ideas of loving her.

She slips out of bed before he can try to steal another kiss and dresses in a hurry. She needs to look over the reports and battleplans before the generals get to them, and before Kasius, too. Maybe she can figure out something.

She needs a good lie, or else Kasius will try to turn the tables on her, try to assure her safety instead of his own. He is a fool like that.

And indeed, he gives her command of the rearguard before either she or his generals can complain.

She wants the vanguard. The battle isn’t winnable but they might decimate the enemy far enough that retreat won’t be shameful for the survivors, will be passed off as regrouping.

She has confidence in her abilities. In the vanguard, with the Odium, she could make it happen.

The Odium isn’t ordered. Sinara purses her lips tightly to stop herself from arguing and waits for the generals to do it instead.

For once, they do not contradict Kasius, and she hates them for it as much as she usually does for the opposite.

They are overrun, like she knew they would be. Maybe that’s what his generals wanted, an end to it all.

There’s a blade lodged between her ribs she knows better than to pull out and the blood dripping down her forehead keeps clouding her vision. Neither stops her from stumbling her way towards command.

Not until the firebombs start raining down. Not until she knows there is no saving Kasius.

* * *

Sinara wakes with a start, jerking upright, the covers slipping off her, her hand shooting to her ribs and finding - nothing.

She’d expected the handle of a knife. She’d expected blood, at the very least. The room doesn’t reek of field lazaret.

She blinks the remnants of sleep from her mind; Kasius is stirring next to her. A dream, then. Well, a nightmare, truly.

She scowls at her own subconscious’ unnecessary dramatics. She slips out of bed before Kasius is properly awake.

“I think I should take the vanguard,”she tells him when he mumbles a sleepy greeting.

That wakes him up, alright.

She goes and tells his generals the same before he can stop her. Well, she tells them it was his orders. They share approving glances, a slight hint of mockery towards her. She doesn’t care. Let them think Kasius has grown tired of her.

Her fingers are steady as she uncorks her vial of Odium.

It was a good choice not to say goodbye to Kasius, she thinks. It would have made it much harder to force the black sludge down if she had seen the betrayal in his eyes.

Maybe she should have been surprised, when she’s in a ring of corpses, her heart close to giving out, and sees Kasius not far from her, closing in, black streaks down his chin and across his cheeks.

“One last kiss,”he demands, and she grants it.

It is too late to argue the stupidity of him drinking the Odium, too, when she was the only one who had to, when she did it so he could be safe.

There’s an ache in her chest and she doesn’t know what brings it: Kasius’ foolishness, or the poison pounding through her veins.

Her heart is already struggling to keep up.

At least she won’t make it until his gives out, too.

* * *

Sinara wakes up.

That surprises her, which makes no sense. There were strange dreams - blades in her flesh, liquid fire on her skin, the taste of Odium clinging to her lips, bones shattered, bomb fragments in her lungs - but she knows better than to put any importance into something as silly as dreams.

There’s shadows of memories of dozens and dozens of her own death. Fear for the upcoming battle, she supposes, that her subconscious insists on expressing in the most vivid detail, the most dramatic fashion.

“You’re contagious,”she mutters to Kasius, more fondly than she means to, and smoothes his hair back.

He leans into her touch and blinks up at her sleepily.“Is it time already?”

It was time a few minutes ago.

“Not quite yet,”Sinara says.

Somehow, she needs a moment to rest her head on his chest and listen to his heart, beating steadily, just like her own.

If Kasius finds this strange, he does not say so. He just wraps his arms around her and holds her close.

They haven’t moved by the time the bombs start falling.

* * *

His generals have separated them again this time - this time? she does not pause to ponder that strange thought - and it takes far, far too long to fight her way back through to him.

She sees him sink to his knees and strikes down his generals; sinks to her knees by his side and gathers him into her arms.

“No,”she whispers. She presses against his abdomen as if there is any hope to stem the bleeding.“No, no, no, it wasn’t supposed to be you.”

“Nara,”he manages. 

There’s blood running down his chin.

She blinks and it’s Odium, a flash, gone again as quick as it came.

“Don’t leave me,”she begs, even though she has left him half a hundred ti- no, she never would leave him. That makes no sense. She shakes her head to get that thought out, to clear the confusion.

All she manages is to make the lone tear clinging to her lashes fall, running down Kasius’ cheeks instead of her own.

He tries to reach for her but his hand falls limp before it even touches her face. She cradles him against her chest; there is no more point in trying to stop the bleeding. It has stopped, anyway. His heart isn’t pumping blood anymore.

His skin cools against hers far too quickly, far too soon for her to give up the last shred of denial.

It hurts more, so much more, than being torn to shreds by a frag bomb. She doesn’t know how she knows that. She only knows it’s true.

* * *

Sinara wakes, and Kasius is there, safe and sound and breathing, and she does not question it.

She kisses him awake, doesn’t care that she’s crying, just kisses him and kisses him, like he’s the air she breathes. He was dead and now he isn’t and her memories of all her strange dreams are so much clearer now. They can’t happen again, not any of them, but especially not the last.

“I love you,”she tells him, when she knows they need to leave the room if she wants any chance at making a change to the way this battle goes. Or at least make a change to Kasius dying, once again. She can’t possibly have dreamed so many things in just one night.

He stares at her, utterly thunderstruck, and then smiles, somewhere between awe and heartbreak.

He probably knows as well as she does that she said it now because there will be no other time to say it.

“I love you, too,”he says and kisses her.

She’s not crying anymore. She’ll make it, this time.

Maybe they’ll both make it, she thinks, when he tells her,“You should go check on our ship.”

It seems she really didn’t have to bring up desertion, after all.

When she steps onto his ship, he is speaking to his generals. He did not elaborate on how he intends to get away from them but he must have a plan so she trusts him, and waits.

It isn’t until the ship springs to life around her and takes her out of the planet’s atmosphere that she realises his plan never included him.

* * *

The loops are easier to remember when she makes it out alive.

She never made multiple in a row before, or at least she doesn’t think so.

It is all very clear now - or as clear as time anomalies can ever be.

Sinara only ever meant to save Kasius but he interfered too much, by trying to save her at his own expense. It seems she will have to save them both.

She is given command of the rearguard. That never works. That only ever keeps her alive.

She accepts with a nod and heads out, passing the communicator along to Van-Tak.

“His Highness wants you to lead the rearguard,”she says.

He’s just arrogant enough to believe it, not arrogant enough to go inside and thank Kasius for the honour he didn’t bestow upon him.

Van-Tak smirks and leaves. She almost calls after him to remind him to drink his Odium but instead she slips back inside.

It doesn’t take her long to return to command but it does take her long enough for Kasius to get into an argument with his generals. He is against the rearguard drinking Odium, from what she gathers.

He does not see the blade in his general’s hand in time. The generals do not see Sinara in time.

“Let’s get out of here,”Sinara says.

They do. The battle field is razed to the ground far, far below them.

* * *

Sinara watches the numbers with apprehension, even as her fingers idly brush through Kasius’ hair. She isn’t sure it worked until the next day begins, and hers doesn’t start over.

She drops a kiss onto Kasius’ forehead and he lifts his head from her chest, slight confusion in his pleased smile.

She isn’t much one for such tender gestures. Perhaps she finally ought to admit she loves him to this version of Kasius, too. It’s not so easy when she’ll get to live more than a few hours with such vulnerability out in the open.

Instead, she settles for,“I’m glad you’re with me. That was the longest day of my life.”

“I’m glad I’m with you, too,”Kasius says.

He probably heard the ‘I love you’ in her words just as clearly as she hears it in his.

She smiles and allows herself to drift off to sleep.


End file.
